The chair legs screech against the floor as you stand abruptly. 'Stay here,' you tell Mrs. Chase, pressing your palm against the .38 in your coat pocket for reassurance. The bakery's back entrance is a narrow stairwell that reeks of burnt sugar and garbage, the steps sticky with decades of spilled syrup. You pause at the bottom, listening to the alley's symphony—dripping pipes, scuttling rats, and somewhere distant, the uneven rhythm of someone trying too hard to breathe quietly.

Pushing open the door with your shoulder, you're met with a wall of fog so dense it swallows the beam of your flashlight whole. The cobblestones glisten with something darker than rainwater near the dumpster. Kneeling, your fingers come away smeared with burgundy—still warm. A trail of droplets leads toward a cluster of wooden crates stamped with Chinese characters.

You approach silent as the mist, until the toe of your Oxford bumps something soft. A woman's pump lies on its side, its heel snapped clean off. The same pearlescent sheen from the earring glints at you from inside the shoe—a monogrammed insole reading 'C.C.' Charlotte Chase's initials. The dumpster lid creaks above you. Too slow—by the time you look up, all you catch is the fluttering tail of a dark coat disappearing over the brick wall, and the faintest whiff of jasmine perfume cutting through the alley's stench.